How to access entity manager with spring boot and spring data - spring-boot

Question

How can I get access to the Entity Manager in the repository when using Spring Boot and Spring Data?
Otherwise, I will need to put my big query in an annotation. I would prefer to have something more clear than a long text.

Answer 1

You would define a CustomRepository to handle such scenarios. Consider you have CustomerRepository which extends the default spring data JPA interface JPARepository<Customer,Long>
Create a new interface CustomCustomerRepository with a custom method signature.
public interface CustomCustomerRepository {
public void customMethod();
}
Extend CustomerRepository interface using CustomCustomerRepository
public interface CustomerRepository extends JpaRepository<Customer, Long>, CustomCustomerRepository{
}
Create an implementation class named CustomerRepositoryImpl which implements CustomerRepository. Here you can inject the EntityManager using the #PersistentContext. Naming conventions matter here.
public class CustomCustomerRepositoryImpl implements CustomCustomerRepository {
#PersistenceContext
private EntityManager em;
#Override
public void customMethod() {
}
}

Answer 2

In case you have many repositories to deal with, and your need in EntityManager is not specific for any particular repository, it is possible to implement various EntityManager functionality in a single helper class, maybe something like that:
#Service
public class RepositoryHelper {
#PersistenceContext
private EntityManager em;
#Transactional
public <E, R> R refreshAndUse(
E entity,
Function<E, R> usageFunction) {
em.refresh(entity);
return usageFunction.apply(entity);
}
}
The refreshAndUse method here is a sample method to consume a detached entity instance, perform a refresh for it and return a result of a custom function to be applied to the refreshed entity in a declarative transaction context. And you can add other methods too, including query ones...